Mike Vestil is an arrogant clown and a punk kid posing as a business guru

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you today’s topic of conversation… Mike Vestil.

Not only will he teach us how to become millionaires, he can levitate.

Mike Vestil is a self-described “superhero entrepreneur” who claims to have made a small fortune selling t-shirts online. He now travels the world, giving people advice on how to “gain time freedom so that they can focus on growing the other aspects of life like health, family, and relationships”.

He also claims that if you give him some of your money, he’ll show you how you can replicate his t-shirt business model, which will make you rich and give you the freedom to travel the world.

THE CATCH: After reviewing his advertising, his free eBook, and his paid course, I can find no evidence that Mike Vestil has done any of the things he claims to have done. After making an honest effort to find examples of “weird niche” t-shirt businesses Mike Vestil owns, I can’t find any – nor does he provide any personal case studies in his online course.

In fact, it seems like his primary business is selling people advice, not t-shirts.

If you find this article valuable, please consider liking BSBA on Facebook and following us on Twitter.

Personally, I think Mike Vestil is a fake entrepreneurship guru, a perfect example of everything wrong with the business advice industry, and a case study in how easy it can be to swindle people out of their money. I’ll lay out my case below – you are free to draw your own conclusions.

Advertising

I first became acquainted with Mike Vestil as he ruthlessly invaded my Facebook feed with advertising showing him living the classic Gen Y dream – travelling the world, making easy money off the internet, and running his mouth about things he thinks he has expertise in. Some examples:

Pop quiz: what do the following headlines have in common?

“How to create a rock-solid business online without any background knowledge”

“How a 22-year-old made $5k his first month selling weird t-shirts”

“How a 22-year-old runs a $100,000-a-month business while travelling the world”

ANSWER: They’re all full of shit. Everything this guy does is geared towards making it seem like he’s a 20-something who’s stumbled into some magic money-making formula that allows him to travel the world, make money, and be a jackass with no repercussions.

And out of the goodness of his heart, he’s sharing all those secrets with us simple folk. Here’s an example of one of his brilliant masterclasses.

As far as I can tell, Mike Vestil spends eight minutes in the above video giving us the definitions of drop-shipping and affiliate marketing, and explaining the importance of having a target market (without ever using the proper term for it). Bonus wisdom: moms like Pinterest, people aged 18-24 are probably on Instagram.

NOTE: Mike does not show us actual examples of his own work at any point in this video, except to stand up and show us a t-shirt he claims to have designed. He then spends the entire eight minutes pontificating in front of a whiteboard – this is important, and we’ll come back to it later.

Jackass on purpose?

Here’s an example of his “dopey guy goes from rags to riches” story on his website:

“I Used To Spend 8-12 Hours A Day In The Dental Field. Then I realized I was trading all my time away for money that I was never going to have time to spend… makes no sense right? So while working I sold t shirts in a weird niche on my own website to try and make some extra money… Here’s me with a ukulele while eating a sandwich… EPIC”

Although I have no doubt that Mike Vestil is an insufferable douchelord in person, it seems to me like he has intentionally crafted an online persona that makes him more accessible to the type of people he’s selling to. He purposefully writes his copy to seem unprofessional, and most of his pictures are him without a shirt in some exotic location.

My guess? Mike is targeting immature men, ages 18-24, who want to make money without having to put in actual work. Although the devil on my shoulder is saying “caveat emptor, let these punk kids spend their money on snake oil”, the angel on my shoulder makes a compelling case: “People like Mike Vestil distract from quality resources that could help these young men become real businesspeople.”

Mike Vestil’s Money-Grabbing Vortex

As a side note, it seems that a lot of these folks use clickfunnels.com as a service. There’s likely something to be learned from watching how so-called entrepreneurship gurus make their money.

After clicking on one of Mike’s ads, you’ll be taken to a website called projectbestme.com where you get to view a pictorial essay of Mike’s ascension from frustrated dentist’s assistant to king of the douchejungle. You’ll also be prompted to download his free “20 Weird Niches” eBook, where he will share the “top 20 weird niches that has made me the most money”.

“20 Weird Niches” eBook (FREE)

Helpfulness Rating: Cheering up a refugee by saying ‘things could always be worse’Bullshit Rating: Starting to contaminate the water table

I wish I could say more about this shitty eBook, but it’s actually a five-slide PowerPoint using a basic template, and only one of those slides has actual content on it. The rest is either information about how awesome Mike is, or a sales pitch for his stuff.

And the best part? The ‘content’ he provides is a one-slide bullet-point list of 20 “niches” that he’s sold to. No other information is provided, such as sales figures, examples of products, or websites where he’s actually selling these products.

Remember when I observed that Mike Vestil showed no ACTUAL EXAMPLES of his work in his YouTube video? This behaviour continues in his exclusive email content. In this sense, all the photos of him travelling the world may serve as distractions from the fact that he might not have actually done what he claims.

Anyway, the last slide in the “20 Weird Niches” eBook points us towards a landing page for Mike’s training course, which he calls “The ECom Blueprint”. So we’ll go there next.

The ECom BluePrint ($7)

Helpfulness Rating: Drinking salt water when dehydratedBullshit Rating: Stinks to high heaven

So, let’s assume that you’re dumb enough to fall for all Mike Vestil’s bullshit so far, and you click on the link in the “20 Weird Niches” eBook. What will you get?

“A precise and simple, step-by-step video course for creating your own online store from scratch.. without having any background knowledge what so ever”

Okay, seems fair. A lot of people would benefit from knowing how to create and operate an e-commerce platform. For the purposes of this research, I clicked ‘buy’.

What is “The ECom Blueprint”?
Now, I realize that I’ve written a pretty long article about how awful Mike’s advertising and free eBook are. So, in fairness to Mike, I actually sat (or skimmed) through every video in Mike’s course. And unsurprisingly, I was not impressed.

Essentially, Mike’s “ECom Blueprint” is a video series explaining the very basics of e-commerce, paired with a Shopify tutorial. The production quality is pretty low – Mike clearly put this together by himself, with PowerPoint and a half-decent computer mic.

Having a low-quality product would be just fine by me, IF MIKE VESTIL WAS ACTUALLY AN E-COMMERCE EXPERT. But even in his paid course, he can provide no examples of businesses he has successfully started and operated.

As part of this course, Mike walks us through the creation of a new Shopify store called ‘Proud to be a Filipino’. But since it’s just an example, it looks like garbage. And after searching for the store on Google, it’s not even operational.

Verdict: Mike Vestil is a punk who is trying to scam people looking for expert advice on starting an e-commerce store. In his advertising, free eBook, or paid course, he does not provide a single case study of an online store he has personally started and successfully operated.

Upsell, Upsell, Upsell

Once you agree to fork over $7 to this fake-ass kid, you’ll be prompted to waste more money in various ways:

– $10 for a private webinar where Mike will teach you “how I made $5000 my first month”
– $37 for a case study on TheYoungCEOClub.com*
– A last-ditch effort to sell you the case study for $27

TheYoungCEOClub.com is a t-shirt business launched in December 2016, which received less than 5000 website visits in January 2017. SimilarWeb estimates it’s got a 42% bounce rate… hardly a blowout success, and definitely not something anyone sane should pay $37 to learn how to replicate.

Note the opt-out: “I’d rather get aids”… classy, Mike Vestil. Classy.

How Mike Vestil steals other people’s content

Speaking of classy, check out this Medium Article by someone who discovered that Mike Vestil was stealing their content.

Do you really think he’s just acting like he has mental issues? I watched the video that you put in this article, and I must say, I thought his idiocy genuine. Most people who are pretending to be less intelligent than they really are can’t pull off that blank look in their eyes. To me he seems like “that guy” who never did his own homework and always brought the weed to the party. And now he’s making money scamming other people who (for some reason) think he represents something real and potentially tangible by continuing to be an idiot, but this time with poses in pretty places so everyone can see how rich he is and want to emulate him. And he’s still the guy with the weed, only now it’s Mexi-marsh and he’s selling it for $200 a quarter by telling people it’s totally crystallized and some kind of hybrid only he knows how to get. That doesn’t take intelligence; it just takes one person who’s convinced himself his product is awesome and the right market. And distribution platforms.

Hi. I fell for the blueprint. I am ashamed, because after i putchased the 7$ course (“Price of a hamburger” – Mike) and the $10 webinar or blueprint, i realized just how insanely shitty his content was. The Filipino merch store is so effortless. I was just like…wtf is this shit.

He literally tells you to steal tshirt designs of already successful tshirts. That is his gd business model. Stealing.

If you don’t already know, at the end of that webinar, he has a NEW LIST OF 442 niches that is literally an excel spreadsheet – a bare-minimum excel document (no need for templates or designs) that he copy and pasted fandoms, professions, and hobbies into. 442 rows, 1 column of something you could find pretty much ANYWHERE online.

He also upsells you to a course VALUE OF 5480$ (He tries to ulsell you multiple times in the webinar) but since he is such a good guy, he’ll give it to tou for $497 or two payments of $297.

Hey thanks for the review….It is AMAZING how these guys can lie to sell something that they assemble on the net. Fake testimonials and all. When are we going to realize that THEY SELL COURSES NOT MONEY FORMULAS! Even if the gurus seem altruistic they are in for the money!

Maybe instead of being the negative, depressing individual you are, you could actually build a decent website that focuses on positivity and helping people change the aspects of their lives, rather than bashing people who are significantly more successful than you.

I know mike.
He never “worked” in the dental field. He never worked at all. He was a predental student at Marquette. Him and I got sold on a pyramid scheme (Verve, maybe you’ve heard of it) I left shortly after I realized what a joke it was, but once he became a part of it, it took over his life. He was so obsessed with the scheme he lost all of his friends after neglecting them, and stopped caring about school. He dropped out of college because he doesn’t believe in working – he thinks he can make more money with get rich quick schemes. He’d con his own best friend out of $100 given the opportunity, I’ve watched it happen. Guy has no integrity.

Also, what you see is what you get. He’s not dumbing himself down in those videos.. that’s really how he acts.

Oh and one more thing,
Even the name is fake.
His last name isn’t vestil, it’s Monticello. And the pictures on his website are very much propped, kid never worked a day or owned a pair of scrubs in his life.

Well to me it was just a $27 course so I didn’t worry about paying for it. I didn’t expect him to share his own T shirt websites with me because then I can just steal his thunder.
If he said ok go to this site and u will see where I sell T shirts saying “I Love Cheese” and here is an income statement showing that this website brings me $50,000 a month. What do you think all of the people who paid $27 for the course will do? We would all copy exactly what he has done. Many internet business people teach you hownto harness the power of the Internet to sell things, but they don’t share what is their $20,000 a
Month product that they sell on Amazon etc. I don’t need proof of Mike’s wealth. I have no doubt that he no longer works a 9 to 5 job . Maybe most of his income
Is from selling his course but I found his content to be good enough for me to figure out if I want to sell T shirts online or not. $27 well spent. I “waste” more at a restaurant.